A fearless mascot meme is a popular trend on social media platforms, particularly Twitter and Instagram. This meme involves photoshopping an image of a brave or fearless character onto a picture or video clip of someone or something that is typically seen as fearful or timid. The juxtaposition of these two elements creates a humorous and entertaining effect. The fearless mascot meme originated from the concept of juxtaposition in humor. It takes something unexpected or opposite and combines it with a contrasting element. In this case, the fearless mascot represents bravery and courage, while the fearful or timid subject enhances the comedic effect.
Will Candy Crush fans find a new fix with Bubble Witch Saga 2?
Tens of millions of people are still swapping sweets in the Candy Crush Saga game on smartphones, tablets and Facebook. Now its publisher, King, has released a new puzzle game: Bubble Witch Saga 2.
It's available today for Android and Apple devices, as well as on Facebook. As with previous Saga games, if you log in using your Facebook profile, your progress will be saved across all of these if you choose to play across several.
As you'll likely have guessed from the name, this is a sequel: the original Bubble Witch Saga was actually King's first mobile game back in July 2012, although the company has since admitted that it wasn't as fun as it could be on smartphones in particular.
"It plays great on iPads with larger screens, but you kinda had to squint on smartphones," King's games boss Tommy Palm told the Guardian last year. Bubble Witch Saga 2 is the company's attempt to remedy those faults, slapping several layers of polish on to the core gameplay.
And that gameplay is… popping bubbles. Specifically, firing coloured bubbles from the bottom of the screen at other coloured bubbles higher up to make matches of three or more, which then disappear. You have a set number of bubbles to fire on each level.
As with King's other games, this isn't a new form of gameplay in itself.
Just as Candy Crush Saga took its cues from a game called Bejeweled and Papa Pear Saga was heavily based on a game called Peggle, both Bubble Witch Saga games have their roots in a series of games called Puzzle Bobble and Bust-a-Move – the names varied depending on where in the world and on what device you played them.
Around that, King has wrapped a structure that is now familiar from its other Saga games: you play through levels earning one, two or three stars for your scores, with different challenges to vary the core matching gameplay, and power-ups used to get you out of tricky spots.
Bubble Witch Saga 2's Free the Ghost levels. Photograph: PR
Here, the power-ups include a rainbow bubble that will match with any colour, and a fire bubble that blazes a path through any bubbles in its way. Once unlocked, you get three of each for free, but if you want more, you'll have to spend gold bars.
Yes, virtual spending. As with the other Saga games, virtual items and in-app purchases figure prominently in Bubble Witch Saga 2 – it's one of the "freemium" games that have come to dominate the mobile games industry.
Gold bars are used to buy the booster bubbles, but also to get a few more bubbles if you hit your limit on a level, and to buy more lives – you lose a life every time you fail a level. An in-app store sells the gold bars starting at £0.69 for 10, and rising to £34.99 for 650.
Note, you can also choose to "ask friends" for more lives. Tapping this button brings up a list of Facebook friends playing the game, who you can then ask for help – another familiar feature from the other Saga games.
There are three types of levels at the moment in Bubble Witch Saga 2: Clear the Top, Save the Animals and Free the Ghost. The first tasks you with reaching the top of the level and freeing up six spaces on the uppermost row; the second involves clearing bubbles to rescue animals floating throughout the level; and the third involves freeing a spook trapped at the centre of a rotating cluster of bubbles.
So, is Bubble Witch Saga 2 any good? Needless to say, it won't appeal to the vocal brigade of Candy Crush haters who see King and its Saga games as the epitome of freemium awfulness. If this is you, Bubble Witch Saga 2 won't change your mind, but there are some excellent paid games out there as alternatives.
What if you're a big Candy Crush Saga fan looking for a new fix? Bubble Witch Saga 2 is definitely worth a try, as its structure will be familiar, but the gameplay will be a fresh change from candy-swapping.
This kind of bubble-popping was brilliant fun in the Bust-a-Move and Puzzle Bobble games, and King has done a much better job second time round in translating it to modern touchscreens. No squinting required.
Expect to be asking friends for help regularly. Photograph: PR
I do wonder if there's a risk of Saga overload, though. There was a moment around level 20-something where I got stuck, lost all my lives – they replenish naturally if you don't pay, but only at the rate of one every 30 minutes – and I had a sudden, wearying vision of the future.
Weeks and months of grinding through difficult levels, being prodded to buy gold bars, and badgering friends (and being badgered in return by them) for lives. How many people who went hundreds of levels down the Candy Crush Saga rabbit hole will relish the prospect of doing it all over again in a new game?
That said, at 9.30am this morning, this point was going to be the main thrust of the review, once I stopped playing. The next time I looked up, it was 10.30am, I'd reached level 40 (without paying) and completely forgotten the theory that this was supposed to be a grind.
Incidentally, level 40 is the first roadblock in Bubble Witch Saga 2: you're asked to either wait five days to unlock the next set of levels, spend nine gold bars, or ask friends for help. Judging by the in-game map, this happens again after level 55.
At launch, Bubble Witch Saga 2 has 70 levels, but King says it'll be adding new ones every fortnight, following the same pattern as Candy Crush Saga.
So, in answer to the question in the headline of this review: if you love Candy Crush Saga, will you love Bubble Witch Saga 2 as well? The chances are good. And even if you're starting to wonder when the wheels of the Saga bandwagon will start to wobble, there's plenty of fun to be had.
From 'Candy Crush' To 'Bubble Witch,' King Has Never Had An Original Idea
Activision has just paid an absolutely ludicrous sum of money to become one of the biggest players in the mobile games genre overnight. They’ve shelled out $5.9 billion to purchase King, parent company of games like Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga, which have been mobile staples for years now, and absolutely enormous revenue generators for the company.
While the $5.9 billion deal is bigger than even Disney buying storied franchises like Marvel and Star Wars, there’s an argument to be made for the purchase based purely on the benefit of buying a revenue generator like that, and also instantly having hundreds of millions of active users marching under the Activision banner.
But what I can’t avoid mentioning is that King is yet another example of the creative bankruptcy of mobile. It’s a company in the vein of Zynga that has rarely had an original thought, instead drawing “inspiration” from well-established, existing games, either in mobile or all throughout games history, the main difference being that they've successfully monetized them through microtransactions.
I can go through pretty much every game King offers, and show you almost exactly where they all came from.
Bejeweled/CandySwipe/Candy Crush Saga
We might as well start with the mother of all King properties, the enormously popular Candy Crush which has very, very clear roots int he hit puzzle game Bejeweled, credited with popularizing the Match-3 craze years before Candy Crush existed. But in fact, King has also been accused of cloning CandySwipe, a lower budget Match-3 Bejeweled clone that came out two years before Candy Crush Saga, which had similar candies, messages (Sweet!) and an app icon.
Puzzle Bobble/Bubble Witch Saga
King's second most popular franchise, Bubble Witch, can directly trace its lineage to the classic Puzzle Bobble, also known as Bust-a-Move when it came to North America. In the game, players try to clear bubbles in another form of color-matching.
SameGame/Pet Rescue Saga
Another classic puzzle genre, this time from the '80s, which King brought to present data and altered with pets. More color matching.
Peggle/Papa Pear Saga
Peggle's bouncing pegs have been a staple of the puzzle gaming genre for years, and King appropriated the idea for Papa Pear Saga, which plays nearly identically to the classic.
Boggle/Alpha Betty Saga
Spelling out words in a grid with blocks has been Boggle's game for years now, but King made their own version with Alpha Betty as recently as this year.
Chuzzle/Scrubby Dubby Saga
Though not identical, King's recent Scrubby Dubby Saga appears to have been directly inspired by 2005 puzzler Chuzzle, as the two play similarly.
As for the rest? Pyramid Solitaire Saga is, unsurprisingly, based on the solitaire card game Pyramid. Diamond Digger Saga is another type of SameGame, while Farm Heroes Saga and Pepper Panic Saga are more Match-3 variants. And that's it. That's their entire games roster.
The point I'm making is that King is very good at turning existing successful puzzle games and giving them their polished "Saga" spin. But they've never invented a truly original hit, always drawing on past puzzling icons for "inspiration." I don't think they're Zynga-style outright cloners, but the two companies do seem similar in many ways, and look where Zynga is now. (Seriously, look, like send out a search party for them).
King has grown fat off the ability to effective monetize classics by forcing players to pay for extra lives and to skip timegates. It's worked for a good long while, and with the amount of revenue they bring in, I can't even say that the $5.9B valuation is necessarily crazy. But it is disappointing all the same that King is now a part of the biggest deal in gaming history when it's never had a truly original thought in its head. That's a bad precedent for the industry, and rewarding a mobile giant for the practices that make the mobile games industry at large something of a creative wasteland.
I've reached out to King for comment on this piece.
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In this case, the fearless mascot represents bravery and courage, while the fearful or timid subject enhances the comedic effect. This meme is often used to mock situations that are perceived as intimidating or scary. One example of a fearless mascot meme is an image of a lion, known for its bravery, edited onto a funny video clip of a person screaming or running away from a harmless object.
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Week that was Oct 6th, 2023Another example is a superhero character edited onto a picture of a frightened animal. These memes play with the idea of bravery and fear, highlighting the contrast between the two. The fearless mascot meme has gained popularity due to its ability to entertain and make people laugh. Its humor lies in the unexpected and ironic combination of a courageous character with a fearful subject. Social media users enjoy sharing and creating these memes, as they provide a lighthearted approach to situations that are commonly seen as scary or intense. Overall, the fearless mascot meme is a humorous trend on social media platforms that plays with the concept of bravery and fear. It provides entertainment through the unexpected combination of a fearless character with a fearful subject. This meme serves as a light-hearted way to mock intimidating situations and create laughter..
Reviews for "Fearless Mascots and Cross-Cultural Appeal: How Cute Characters Transcend Boundaries"
1. John - 2 stars
I was really disappointed with the Fearless mascot meme. It felt forced and unoriginal. The humor just didn't hit the mark for me and I found myself cringing more than laughing. The meme lacked the cleverness and wit that I usually enjoy in memes. Overall, it was a letdown and I won't be sharing it with my friends.
2. Sarah - 1 star
The Fearless mascot meme was just plain annoying. I didn't find it funny at all, in fact, it was quite irritating. The constant repetition of the same image and caption got old really fast. It felt like a lazy attempt at humor and I couldn't understand why it gained so much popularity. It definitely didn't live up to the hype for me.
3. Mike - 2 stars
I didn't get the appeal of the Fearless mascot meme. It seemed to lack any real substance and was just another run-of-the-mill meme trying to be funny. The concept was weak, and the execution fell flat. I appreciate humor that challenges my thinking or makes me laugh out loud, but this meme didn't do either. I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on it.